TASS
Established in 1904, TASS stands as Russia’s flagship state news service with a legacy of over a century in journalism. The agency maintains a large global footprint, operating approximately 70 bureaus across Russia and the CIS, alongside nearly 60 offices overseas in about 53 countries. Renamed in 1992 as the Information Telegraph Agency of Russia (ITAR‑TASS) following the Soviet Union’s dissolution, it reclaimed the TASS moniker in 2014. Today, TASS consistently produces nearly 3,000 news items daily in six languages, accompanied by around 700 photographs and videos from its correspondents worldwide.
In July 2025, TASS and China’s Xinhua signed an agreement in Zhengzhou extending their partnership through 2030, pledging to expand joint delegations, media tours, and cultural programmes, marking 70 years of cooperation.
Media assets
News agency: TASS
State Media Matrix Typology
Ownership and governance
Functioning as a Federal State Unitary Enterprise, TASS is fully owned by the Russian federal government. Its leadership, Director General Andrey Kondrashov (appointed in 2023), is government-selected and answers directly to state authorities.
Source of funding and budget
In 2020, TASS received a state subsidy of approximately RUB 2.9 billion (US$ 40.3 million). In 2021, the allocation rose modestly to RUB 3.1 billion, and by 2022 subsidies had climbed to nearly RUB 4 billion, according to media reports.
As of late 2024, the Ministry of Finance had increased funding for all state media, including TASS, for 2025, raising allocations by RUB 45 billion to a total of RUB 139.6 billion. While granular numbers for TASS’s overall revenue, profit, or income that span 2024–2025 are not publicly disclosed, these state media allocations provide a window into its core financial backing.
Editorial independence
TASS’s editorial line remains tightly aligned with government narratives. The absence of independent oversight, no statutory protections or assessment mechanisms exist, means editorial independence is not institutionally supported. Academic and NGO research, as recently as March 2024, has reaffirmed that TASS’s coverage consistently reflects government guidelines.
During Soviet times, many of its journalists also served as informants, and this tradition of close alignment with state structures continues to shape the agency’s output. Content analyses conducted in March 2023 and again in February–March 2024 confirmed the agency’s role as a mouthpiece for official policy.
In July 2025, Mikhail Gusman, the long-serving First Deputy CEO of TASS, was abruptly dismissed following a controversy related to his appearance at the Shusha Global Media Forum in Nagorno-Karabakh. At the forum, Gusman appeared alongside Azerbaijani and Ukrainian journalists and publicly praised Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, which provoked significant backlash from Russian nationalist and pro-Kremlin circles. His remarks were seen as politically sensitive and controversial given the tense relations between Russia and Azerbaijan at the time.
The dismissal was officially ordered by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin but without an explicit reason stated. However, media reports and public reactions linked his firing directly to this controversy. Gusman had held the position since 1999 and was a prominent figure in Russian media, underscoring that his removal reflected both the political sensitivity of the agency’s messaging and its function as an instrument of state control in information dissemination.
August 2025